Nicholas Sutton was the 13th person Tennessee executed since 1976. In 1979, he murdered two acquaintances and his own grandmother in two different states. While imprisoned for those crimes, he stabbed to death another inmate in an argument and received the death sentence. Sutton would qualify as a serial killer under the FBI's definition of a minimum four victims. He was born in Morristown in the east of the Volunteer State on July 15, 1961. Nick's mother abandoned him at birth and his father raised him. The elder Sutton was an alcoholic who cared little for his son aside from introducing him to drugs and was always in jail or in mental institutions. He died when Nick was 14, leaving the boy to be cared for by his paternal grandmother Dorothy Sutton, a schoolteacher. As Nick didn't get along with the other kids at school he eventually dropped out.
Dorothy tried her best to help and support her grandson but he was a hopeless case. Any money she loaned him went to purchase drugs or maintain his collection of pitbulls and he even sold a truck and a plot of land in North Carolina she'd bought for him.
On Christmas Day 1979, Sutton walked into the headquarters of the Morristown PD and announced that his grandmother had disappeared and that three days ago he saw her with an unknown male. When police searched Dorothy's home, they found suspicious signs there such as blood splatters in the living room. They took Sutton in for questioning as the search for Dorothy's body continued. Eventually the cops acted on a tip about the property across the state line in North Carolina that Dorothy had purchased for her grandson. Sutton finally confessed that he put her body in a bag, weighed it down with a cinder block, and tossed it in the Nolichucky River. On December 30, the 58 year old schoolteacher was pulled from the river. Autopsy of her body found that she had been concussed and knocked out with a blow to the back of the head, but the cause of death was ultimately freshwater drowning. Sutton was charged with first degree murder and his bail set at $100,000.
Nonetheless, Sutton continued to deny actually killing his grandmother. He would only admit that he disposed of her body and that he found her dead in the house. He dumped it in the river because he didn't want to be suspected of her death. Sutton was not believed and was ultimately convicted of his grandmother's murder and sentenced to life in prison.
After beginning his prison sentence, Sutton changed his story again and claimed that his grandmother was murdered by Charles Almon, a 46 year old Knoxville contractor who was trying to obtain money from him. He claimed Almon broke into the house and attacked the both of them. Dorothy was killed but Sutton managed to shoot Almon and dispose of both their bodies in the river. This version of events also seemed rather implausible, but it could also not be overlooked how Almon had not been seen for over two months and his Jaguar was found abandoned outside a Newport Holiday Inn
Sutton also claimed to have killed John Large, a 19 year old childhood friend of his, and his roommate in Knoxville. Supposedly, in the middle of August 1979, Large and Sutton met at his aunt's Waterville, North Carolina farm where he kept a stash of marijuana and moonshine liquor. The two had been arguing over money as Large had planned to make a large purchase of cocaine in Ohio but never got around to doing so. Sutton apparently rode up to the farm on his motorcycle and was ambushed and shot at by Large before they got into a fight. He beat Large with a tobacco stick and choked him with a dog chain. Then Sutton got the tobacco stick and shoved it down Large's throat, killing him. He dragged the body to a slope near Mt. Serling and buried there in a sumac grove.
This story appeared to be true as police searched the sumac grove and found Large buried where Sutton said he would be. He had indeed been beaten over the head, a chunk of plywood rammed in his mouth rather than a tobacco stick like Sutton had claimed. The state of North Carolina promptly filed murder charges against him. However, Almon's body could not be found anywhere and Sutton now claimed Almon and an unnamed accomplice robbed an Asheville bank and paid him $1,500 to be their getaway driver. Sutton was formally charged in Large's death on April 29, 1980 while the search for Almon continued. On May 14, four dead bodies were found in an old quarry near Newport, one of which was presumed to be Almon's remains. Like Sutton's other victims it had his signature of being wrapped in bags, weighted down with cinderblocks, and thrown in a quarry. The other bodies had no connection to Sutton.
He then confessed that he also murdered an Alcoa teenager in July 1978 and dumped the body in North Carolina and a drug dealer from Atlanta buried on the family farm. Sutton did not offer any clues as to who these individuals were. Prosecutors tried to bargain with Sutton and offer him the deal of no death penalty if he'd tell where the victims were buried. However no luck was had in finding them and they were ultimately believed to be fictitious individuals. Sutton was charged with the death of Almon in June. He agreed to plead guilty for no death penalty and received two additional life sentences. Sutton admitted that he killed the victims in a fit of anger and accepted full responsibility for their deaths.
Sutton was first placed in Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary and then the maximum security Morgan County Correctional Comple in Wartburg. He was actively involved in drug trafficking in the prison and this led to his penultimate crime. One fellow inmate was Carl Estep, a 43 year old convicted child rapist. Inmates who commit crimes against children are not popular in prison, however Estep met his fate not for that, but in a dispute over drugs. In the first week of January 1985 Estep and Sutton got into a fight with the former threatening to stab him with a shiv. Sutton and fellow inmates Charles Freeman, Thomas Street, and David Stufflestreet, all armed themselves with shivs and on January 15 stabbed Estep in his cell 38 times. His arms bore defensive wounds and he had died of several knife thrusts that penetrated his lungs, vena cava, and carotid artery.
Eventually four inmates would testify and link Sutton to the murder. An inmate named Cary Scroggins testified that Estep sold marijuana to fellow inmates and had given Sutton and Freeman some "bad merchandise" which he refused to offer refunds for. They robbed Estep of his watch and other valuables, after which the latter threatened Sutton. During the attack Estep had been heard yelling that he was being killed and for someone to please help. Ultimately Sutton, Freeman, and Street were charged with first degree murder and Stufflestreet as an accomplice. Sutton and Street were sentenced to death and life in prison, respectively, while a jury found Freeman and Stufflestreet not guilty. The murder was deemed aggravated and cruel as Estep had begged for help as he was being attacked.
Sutton's attorneys appealed on the grounds that his deprived childhood should be regarded as a mitigating factor and the fact that he had exhibited good conduct behind bars. They also attested that he had had a Christian conversion in prison and attempted to protect correctional officers during a prison riot. John Large's sister Amy was not sympathetic and wished to see him executed; Sutton's uncle also disowned him and said he didn't deserve to live. The appeals also argued that no one prior to Sutton had been sentenced to death for an in-prison murder in the post-Furman era and that the prosecution had relied on shaky inmate testimony.
After final appeals failed, Sutton was executed in the electric chair at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution on February 20, 2020, at his own request as he chose this method over lethal injection. Sutton ate his requested last meal of fried pork chops, mashed potatoes with gravy and peach pie with vanilla ice cream. As of 2025, he is the most recent person in the United States to be executed via electric chair.
>>17858541>>17858537won't someone please think of the drug dealing child rapist
>>17858607He enjoyed protection for that reason so they weren't gonna let his death slide.
>>17858520 (OP)>>17858526>>17858532I hate the South and everything in it.
hey i thought you guys said they hate kid fuckers in prison and they have to be put in PC for their own safety but this guy is out there in general pop acting as everyone's friendly weed dealer
>>17858672nothing to indicate they weren't in PC. i assume Sutton was probably in PC because he killed his (extremely nice to him) grandma and nobody likes someone who kills their own grandma
>>17858520 (OP)East TN is ultimate hillbilly meth head country.
>>17858672Prison inmates don't tend to have a code, they will shank someone who owes them a cigarette just as quickly as someone who abused a child. They will pretend like the latter case was because of the crimes the shank-ee committed, but in reality they just like killing. Chomos are generally considered to always be in season because the act is so horrendously offensive that it transcends the "moral relativism" observed by most inmates, but if it wasn't a pedophile they would probably be killing someone else. If a Chomo can defend themselves or is immediately put into PC, with the latter very often being the case, they are not killed.
>>17859602it seems like this dude was offering a useful service as a dope dealer so they tolerated him
Inmates really just beat up on anyone they see as weak pedos are generally perceived as an easy target as they usually are noodle-armed dweebs and don't look like a Hells Angel with huge biceps but really if you're in for some pussy-ass offense like fraud or theft you'd also be considered easy pickings.
>>17858613That weed had to get into the prison somehow likely because corrupt staff were smuggling it in.
>>17858532>On May 14, four dead bodies were found in an old quarry near Newporthey it was the 70s wasn't rare to stumble across random dead bodies in abandoned buildings or innawoods back then
>>17859617Pretty much everyone in prison for life sentences is "involved" in trafficking. Lifers have no outside prospects, no reasons to snitch, no real world outside of the prison system, more time in prison because you got caught with contraband is hardly a concern when you are going to die there anyways. Maybe he was a supplier but I'm not even sure if he was a Chomo, it sounds like he was just a standard murderer, kin-slaying is quite the offense but doesn't put a target on you like sex crimes do.
>>17858520 (OP)How do you kill your own grandmother in two different states? I call bullshit.
>>17859715He was in for raping a 9 year old girl.
